Permanent state of emergency
Subtitle: unchecked executive power and the demise of the rule of law
By: Ryan Alford
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 333
ISBN-13: 9780773549197
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: War and emergency powers; Executive power; Rule of law
Description: "After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the US launched several initiatives that are either at the outermost limit of what international human rights law allows or over that limit. These involved systematic violations of non-derogable rights like the right not to be killed without due process, not to be subjected to indefinite arbitrary detention, and not to be tortured. The President of the United States now signs unreviewable death warrants authorizing drone strikes against the nation's citizens; Congress and the courts have declined to review these decisions or curtail this practice, setting a precedent for executive immunity. Do these violations of constitutional law signify a qualitative transformation of the legal order of the United States? Should one seek to answer this question, is it possible to create objective criteria for a mode of constitutional governance? Is it possible to use these criteria to judge whether a nation can be properly considered a rule of law state? This book answers all these questions in the affirmative. The Demise of the Rule of Law in the United States details the long-term consequences of the acceptance of these assertions of executive supremacy: it demonstrates that currently, no branch of government is committed to restraining any presidential administration within the boundaries of the rule of law. The book distinguishes itself from other accounts of the degeneration of constitutional governance during the same period by using an operationalized version of the rule of law as its template for nonconformity. As the book also demonstrates that the minimum norms of the rule of law are embedded within the Constitution of the United States, the conclusion about the effects of the emergency on its constitutional order has considerably more rhetorical force than other scholarly critiques."--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-313)  and index.
Table of contents: title: The minimum requirements of the rule of law; title: The historical development of the rule of law in the United States; title: Overbroad authority given to and appropriated by the executive after the 9/11 attacks; title: The response of the judiciary to executive overreaching, 2003-12; title: Judicial selection and executive branch dominance; title: Congress's failure to exercise oversight.